The 40 Best Political Quotes For 2012 (Fourth Annual)

40) Apparently, our jobless rate is so darned low because a bunch of people gave up on ever finding a job again. So consider us only halfway to Mad Max at Thunderdome and conducing cage fights to determine which of the remaining humans gets the privilege of eating tuna fish out of a can. Given the timeline, you should start praying for the zombie apocalypse now. — Emily Zanotti

37) Professing to being liberal and caring, after all, in this era, is more important than being so. — Victor Davis Hanson

36) Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process. When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything. — Charles Koch

35) People in the leisure class have become so accustomed to affluence as the natural state of things that they no longer feel compelled to embrace any further industrial progress. — William Tucker

34) In placing our constitution in the hands of a black robed elite who can divine from thin air powers, rights, and duties neither contemplated nor easily extrapolated from the constitution, our republic has become a kingdom. Our king is Anthony Kennedy. Every argument advanced is advanced with him in mind. On every major issue he is the decisive vote. Put bluntly, the constitutional integrity of our republic has been ceded to one man in the third branch of our federal government. It makes him more powerful than the democratically elected Congress and President. It is not a sign that our system is too partisan. It is a sign that our system is broken in a fundamental way. — Erick Erickson

33) The wonderful fact of American life is that most American civil liberties and civil rights organizations have little reason for their continued existence. The NAACP, therefore, has to justify its existence. Which it does by manufacturing crises (and hopefully garnering media attention). Without major eruptions of racism, its raison d’etre disappears — along with its funding. — Dennis Prager

32) As a Catholic myself, and a supporter of Catholic institutions, what Sandra Fluke is telling me is that her birth control needs trump the needs of my family. She wants my hard earned dollars to go not to pay for my kids’ braces, their college educations or my retirement, but to subsidize her sex life. — Teri Christoph

31) More than that, the religious society rests on two fundamental principles: personal responsibility and belief in responsibility to future generations. Secularism rejects both principles. Personal responsibility becomes societal responsibility in the secular view; we are all shaped by our genetics and our environment, both of which are out of our control. How, then, can we be held responsible for our actions? — Ben Shapiro

30) People used to believe that human depravity was self-evident and democratic self-government was fragile. Now they think depravity is nonexistent and they take self-government for granted. — David Brooks

29) Rather, what immigration expansionists like Bush are doing, and have always done, is conflate immigrant policy with immigration policy. They’re saying that if you acknowledge that foreigners have souls then you have to support lax enforcement and unlimited future flows. But immigrant policy (how we treat people we have admitted to live among us) is distinct from immigration policy (how many such people to admit, on what terms, and how to enforce the rules). By conflating the two, expansionists engage in moral blackmail, asserting that those who want to change immigration policy are, by definition, anti-immigrant. By separating these two fields, we can make the case for a policy that welcomes foreigners – benevolently! – but limits their numbers, as you would guests in your own home. — Mark Krikorian

28) Leftism fills many of its adherents with contempt and hatred. It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left — that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted — and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too. — Dennis Prager

27) A 2,700-page law is not a “law” by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there’s no equality: Instead, there’s a hierarchy of privilege micro-regulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown, and unnumbered bureaucracy. It’s not just that the legislators who legislate it don’t know what’s in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can never hope to understand it, but that even the nation’s most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension. A 2,700-page law is, by definition, an affront to self-government. — Mark Steyn

26) This contraception thing, my gosh, it’s [so] inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly. — Foster Friess

25) I feel like I’m a feminist, and you want to know why? Because I’m enabled to do things for myself. If I don’t like what someone says, I argue with them. If I’m in the mood for a cocktail, I pay for it myself. If I’m in the market for some sexy-times, then I hit up Rite-Aid on the way home. You want to know why? Because it’s my life, and I can do that, and I don’t have to ask Daddy’s permission first or hit up his wallet. — Wollstonecrafty

24) That’s to say, the unsustainable “bubble” is not student debt or subprime mortgages or anything else. The bubble is us, and the assumptions of entitlement. Too many citizens of advanced Western democracies live a life they have not earned, and are not willing to earn. Indeed, much of our present fiscal woe derives from two phases of human existence that are entirely the invention of the modern world. Once upon a time, you were a kid till you were 13 or so; then you worked; then you died. That bit between childhood and death has been chewed away at both ends. We invented something called “adolescence” that now extends not merely through the teenage years but through a desultory half decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U up till you’re 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on your parents’ health-insurance policy. At the other end of the spectrum, we introduced something called “retirement” that, in the space of two generations, has led to the presumption that able-bodied citizens are entitled to spend the last couple of decades, or one-third of their adult lives, as a long holiday weekend. The bit in between adolescence and retirement is your working life, and it’s been getting shorter and shorter. Which is unfortunate, as it has to pay for everything else. This structural deformity in the life cycle of Western man is at the root of most of our problems. — Mark Steyn

23) Our society chooses to pay for bastards and wonders why the number of bastards increases. Our society refuses to support poor families with married fathers in residence, and wonders why the number of single mothers increases. Our society pays for single motherhood, and wonders why we get it. Our society gives stipends to unemployed and/or homeless males, and wonders why we get more and more of them. — Bill Quick

22) My working poor parents told me that I could do better. They taught me that I was as good as anybody else. And it never occurred to them to tell me that I could just rest comfortably and wait for good old Uncle Sugar to feed me, lead me and then bleed me. — Mike Huckabee

21) The IMF calculates that to maintain present spending trend the United States will have to nearly double (88 percent increase) all federal taxes to maintain theoretical solvency. — Kevin Williamson

20) An armed man is a citizen — a disarmed man is a subject. — Allen West

19) If you tried to hold a series of potluck dinners where a majority brought nothing to the table, but felt entitled to eat their fill, it would probably work out badly. Yet that’s essentially what we’re doing. In today’s America, government benefits flow to large numbers of people who are encouraged to vote for politicians who’ll keep them coming. The benefits are paid for by other people who, being less numerous, can’t muster enough votes to put this to a stop. Over time, this causes the economy to do worse, pushing more people into the moocher class and further strengthening the politicians whose position depends on robbing Peter to pay Paul. Because, as they say, if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can be pretty sure of getting Paul’s vote. — Glenn Reynolds

18) Democracies end when power is moved farther and farther from actual democratic processes. First, the state governments (standing closest to the citizen) is diminished in favor of a centralized government that answers chiefly to bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the permanent Washington government establishment; then the elected members of Congress are diminished in favor of unelected bureaucrats in the Executive (who, in many cases, really can’t even be fired). — Ace

17) As government becomes bigger, it becomes more lawless. — George Will

16) I think this election result has shocked everybody, and our side is no different. I think they’re running around shocked and surprised, they can’t figure it out, and so they’re doing what Republicans always do. The Democrats never do, by the way. When they lose, they never say, “Man, you better become anti-abortion. You know what, we better oppose gay marriage.” The Democrats never do that. We do. We start beating ourselves up. — Rush Limbaugh

15) General Motors has decided to focus on pure Electric Vehicles and Plug-ins—i.e., the types of cars most dependent on government subsidy—rather than on conventional hybrids like the Toyota Prius. Makes sense. In a market every firm specializes in what it does best. Toyota is good at making cars. GM is good at getting government subsidies. — Mickey Kaus

14) Black liberals must be protected. Their honesty and their competence cannot be questioned. No criticism, no matter how reasonable and legitimate, is permitted. And so, their detractors must be slandered as racists. Liberal African American officials — especially those of the highest rank – can’t be held accountable precisely because they’re African Americans. You get the impression that simply being a black liberal is a kind of get out of jail free card? Oops, is that racist? Is this what the most important movement of the 20th century – the great Civil Rights Movement – has come to? — Bernard Goldberg

13) As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it’s always for teachers, firemen, and police – but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of. — Glenn Reynolds

12) But that’s the funny thing about Big Government: the bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it’s supposed to be doing. — Mark Steyn

11) In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins? — Rush Limbaugh

10) Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood — the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum, and it’s no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their “safe house” in Benghazi. — Mark Steyn

9) We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that, Cathy emphasized. We intend to stay the course. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles. — Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A’s president and chief operating officer

7) (If the rich are evil) why are you sitting in their library? Why are you sitting in their hall? Why did I just listen to a whole show on orangutans with no commercials that they paid for? — Adam Carolla

6) The real story is that our social safety net was supposed to be like one of those, ‘Take a Penny, Leave a Penny’ tills that depend on the honor and neighborliness of a community. And we don’t have that community. What we have is a fragmented mess of givers and takers who are not the same people. — Daniel Greenfield

5) It’s a cancerous cocktail where on the one hand everyone is supposed to be free to do whatever they wish, but on the other we all expect protection from the consequences of our actions. — Nick Crews

4) The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog. — James Taranto

3) This whole thing with Obama saying the rich don’t pay their taxes is f–ing bullshit. First they say to you … ‘The United States of America, you can do anything you want – go for it! So then you go for it and you make it and everyone’s like, ‘F*ck you!’ — Jon Lovitz